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The Professor Talks About The Worst Magic: The Gathering Format Ever


Wizards of the Coast

The first-ever Mythic Invitational may be considered the biggest Magic: The Gathering event yet but many players and fans criticized it for using a terrible format: Duo Standard, where each player is required to bring 2 Standard decks but with no sideboard. It also had an obscure time rule: when the time runs out, the player with the most life wins. Now, the Professor of Tolarian Community College pointed out those issues and explains why Duo Standard is the worst MTG format ever. 

Watch the video below: 

The fact that Duo Standard lacks sideboards and how the third game of each match is randomly selected could make some matches feel like a coin-flip without giving players a chance to react. Part of playing Magic is having the skills to react to what your opponents have. Duo Standard doesn't give players that chance to show those skills. Instead, there are a lot of dead cards that are useless in some match-ups. And that time rule is just ridiculous. Seeing Gerry Thompson lose because he has less life than his opponent was awful to watch. 

The only thing I like about Duo Standard is that it featured more decks for each player but sadly, the meta of the Mythic Invitational wasn't so diverse. The event featured too many Esper Control vs. Mono-Red matches. 

Wizards of the Coast even admitted that Duo Standard had some problems.

"We don't think Duo Standard balanced all those levers well and this won't be the final form for esports events on MTG Arena. There are a lot of great learnings and data we'll be digging into over the next few weeks. We're excited to take what we've learned back to the format drawing board and make changes for our next event."

 

Hopefully, they won't use Duo Standard again for big Magic events. The format is not even in Arena so I have no idea why they featured it for the "biggest Magic: The Gathering event." 

What do you think about Duo Standard? 

Related: Top 10 Most Memorable MTG Moments From Mythic Invitational & War of The Spark Panel

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